Couldn't find a more appropriate forum to post this in. My question does pertain to sequencing, via MIDI.

I have a MOTU MIDI Express XT and an Emagic AMT8. I got the AMT8 because MOTU and Linux do not get along. OTOH, the AMT8 doesn't show up in Sonar on Windows.

I would like to rig my stuff together so I can use any of my synths in either Windows or Linux without having to manually re-patch everything every time I switch (which would be 6 ins and 6 outs), which would be frequently if all goes well with a new computer I'm getting soon. Does anyone think I could patch my synths into the MOTU and plug the MOTU into the AMT8 via #8 in/out on the front of the MOTU, with the MOTU plugged into the Windows machine via USB and the AMT8 plugged into the Linux machine via USB?

The MOTU allows routing, in standalone mode, or even while attached to the computer.

The AMT8 routes in stand-alone mode, but does not route while attached to the computer. However, this doesn't seem to matter for you!

[edit - by routing, I mean the device does it's own remapping and routing. When attached to the computer, all 8 ins & outs show up as direct ports to the computer. the MOTU however has the 8 physical ins & outs that can still be routed among themselves despite having a computer attached.]

I'd route all your synths into the MOTU.
- Then for Windows, attached the MOTU via USB to the PC.
- For Linux, your idea is solid: attach the AMT8, and talk through 1 or more MIDI channels to the MOTU.

This way, you could have BOTH computers attached to ALL of your gear, and each other (Unless this is a dual-boot situation)

Speaking of which, there will be more on this. I just spent the afternoon rigging a ventilation fan to a Proliant blade server and now it's just about quiet. I'll post a link to a blog post I plan to write soon. This will be an episode of Trick My Machine.

The MOTU allows routing, in standalone mode, or even while attached to the computer.

I'd route all your synths into the MOTU.
- Then for Windows, attached the MOTU via USB to the PC.
- For Linux, your idea is solid: attach the AMT8, and talk through 1 or more MIDI channels to the MOTU.

This way, you could have BOTH computers attached to ALL of your gear, and each other

Would you know how I should configure the MOTU? I have an Ion plugged in/out on port 3 of the MOTU and MOTU port 8 in/out connected to AMT port 8 in/out. I have to push some buttons on the MOTU, but am not sure what. Through this connection, I'm trying to get a signal in my DAW, which is connected to the AMT via USB.

I just tried Clockworks, from MOTU, for internal routing of the XT, but it seems a bit limited. I'm hoping you'll have more insight, but it's looking like the best solution is to keep the XT and the EMT8 stacked together and physically switch the cables when I need to. Which is not too big a deal. I just set up Ubuntu on my "new" Proliant and I'm able to record audio and MIDI without xruns or glitches (although I haven't run a heavy-load test yet). If this setup works out, I'm going to be converting old project files over to formats I can work with in Linux anyway, which will mean the MOTU will eventually get shelved. If not, I can live with manually re-patching as needed. Maybe even turn the units around so they're facing ass-out.

Clockworks is a lot more confusing to me than the Emagic editor for the AMT, too!! It has the possibility of routing *while* being attached to a computer, so things are more complicated anyways, I guess. For certain, it can do more than the Emagic can do. It's probably just a matter of find how to do it
[edit - changed so phpBB didn't muck with the formatting]
It seems you want to route

Code:

In the MOTU :
Ion - AMT8
( MIDI IN 3 => MIDI OUT 8 )
( MIDI IN 8 => MIDI OUT 3 )
In the AMT8/Linux:
Connect in Jack, or whatever, to AMT8/IN8 and OUT8.

In Clockworks, First select a "user" preset to edit. Any will do, and you can name it. Then go to the Route tab, and drag from 3 on the left, to 8 on the right. Then drag from 8 on left, to 3 on the right. That accomplishes the routing list above for the MOTU. Make sure there are no mutings or mappings (see those tabs).

That should route your Ion through to the ports connected to the AMT8. By selecting the preset in clockworks, your MOTU should also have that preset selected (it will light up "User" and the appropriate present name).

I think that's what I did. The problem, though, is right back at square one - that MOTU is hostile to Linux and there is no current way to see the box on a Linux machine - and hence routing is moot while I'm working with Linux. I tried running Clockworks under Wine - and I can - but the operating system can't see the MOTU.

I don't for the life of me know why some programmer somewhere hasn't simply written or reverse-engineered a Linux driver, and screw MOTU's copyright and proprietary bullshit.

Hi. Was just digging info on this and passed this thread so I might as well dump some of it here--

There is indeed an open source driver for the MOTU midi interfaces, but it only works with the pre-usb models that included the PC parallel port interface. The only way to use the current usb models with this driver is to connect them to one of the old parallel devices via the network port (for the models that include a network port, obviously).

Variants of the driver are available for linux, BSD and BeOS/Haiku. The name of the linux driver is snd-mtpav.ko and it's already installed on all the distros I have and appears to be part of a standard ALSA package. There is a trick to get it to actually load and work: more on that here:

I'm preparing an old box with a parallel port to test this at the moment so I can't vouch for the info in the above link just yet. I have tried the BeOS driver with a pair of networked MTPs. On the system I put together it was too buggy to be usable but it does see the device and all sixteen midi ports (has trouble keeping track of them, unfortunately). I'm hoping for better luck with linux when I try it

One last thing: If you really want to use MOTU's internal routing functions on these boxes, I would strongly advise against using the windows or osx versions of Clockworks. The last "real" Clockworks was the Mac OS9 version and after that MOTU stripped out at least half the functionality as they weren't interested in supporting those features anymore. They're buggy too -- I've noticed that even starting the program in osx with connected hardware will cause instant patch corruption. So if you really want to use those features, get an old mac that can run os9 directly (emulators won't cut it here, you can read up on the old freemidi standard if you really want to know why) and use it as a dedicated MOTU interface control box. OS9 Clockworks does have it's kinks but if you make sure the "auto tech assistant" option is enabled it should work well enough.

Holy crap. It sounds like MOTU's interfaces are pretty much crap if you need more than simple connections. Don't get me wrong - my Express XT works great with my current Windows/Sonar 8 setup, but ALL I need is to connect my synths to the computer. I don't need any fancy routing (my simple routing needs can be handled in Sonar anyway).

I'm glad I got the AMT8. I have no trouble using it in Linux with snd-usb-midi.

msepsis, I know about the ALSA MOTU driver in Linux, but it doesn't run the XT.

Good you got what you need working how you want..

Actually module-mtpav with the right kung-fu does the trick to "connect synths to the computer"... just didn't want your thread to discourage people from trying to use an XT with Linux. The alsa-project page on setting up the interface is no longer relavant, but there is info out there on getting this to work.

I did put that machine together, but unfortunately the hardware was a bit sub-par and I think the motherboard just expired. Also had a lot of trouble getting it to run recent distros. The best I could do for midi stuff was last dyne:bolic alpha that was released for testing purposes -- the last official release has kernel-related issues that completely nix the external midi input.

Anyway it did work for awhile -- sort of. As soon as I enabled the interface with "modprobe snd-mtpav" the midi output from the computer seemed to flow through pretty well (not that I performed any exhaustive timing measurements -- just seemed to be basically OK on the TX).

Unfortunately midi input to the computer from the interface didn't fare so well. In fact it only worked slightly better than the BeOS version of this driver in that it didn't crash the machine. I could only get fragments of the midi data stream through to the software if at all, as the input would frequently just quit entirely.

As I said this isn't a fair test but I'll have to wait till I get another box with a parallel port to try again. Dyne:bolic seemed to have no trouble enabling the interface with the single command but it's still possible some other modules were getting in the way and causing the input problems I experienced.

BTW I think there might be some confusion on this thread about which specific hardware the mtpav driver works with. The O.P. stated that he has the USB version of the XT. If this is the case then he is correct in stating that it will not work because it is designed for the previous generation of motu interfaces that used the parallel port and can only connect to the newer USB versions indirecly in the manner I described in my previous post. People sometimes make this mistake since motu more or less re-released the old units with the new interface and the letters "USB" tacked onto the end of the old model names.

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